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If it’s October, it must be Richard Alston! This marks the (wait for it) 14th time we’ve seen them tour, the first being back in 1998. When you follow a company like this over the years, you get the privilege of seeing the tentative first steps of the new recruits; how the best of them blossom into world class dancers; then the slightly older years, when their influence is more in their presence and experience than in their athleticism; with finally a move maybe into choreography or another part of the business. It’s like watching the new generations of an ever-developing family. Every time we see them it’s like a coming home party.

For the first night in Northampton, we had one very new, one quite new, one newly revised and one not-new-but-still-fresh dance making up the programme. The first piece was the only one we’d seen before, Rejoice in the Lamb, which the company brought here in 2014. It’s the strangely wacky story of the 18th century poet Christopher Smart, who had a tendency towards religious persecution mania, would accost strangers in the street into praying with him, was later confined to an asylum, and was taken seriously only by his cat Jeoffry. Britten’s music accentuates the religious and devotional aspects; Alston’s choreography is elegant and crisp and not without its comic highlights. There are several sequences when you forget to try to interpret what you see, but just get carried away by its beauty and flow. Just as when we saw it two years ago, there’s a truly authoritative central performance by Nicholas Bodych as the misguided poet. The company is just back from having performed this in New York and I think maybe its having experienced the metropolitan madness gave it just a little extra zing this time around. A beguiling start to the evening.

After a pause we had the brief but high impact Isthmus Remix, Richard Alston’s revision of a duet he made in 2013. Clad in multi-coloured tabards, giving the impression perhaps of being on rival school sports teams, the dancers move to the spiky rhythms of Jo Kondo’s Isthmus, weaving in and out of relationships with each other in a state of borderline aggression. The dancers’ arms are outstretched above and to the side to occupy the biggest space possible around their bodies, which for me created a sense of a classical position gone slightly skew-whiff. It’s a truly ensemble piece and it looked stunning.

Our next piece was as new as it’s possible to be without being a premiere – Martin Lawrance’s Tangent receiving only its second public performance. It’s inspired – at a distance – by the Argentine Tango but there’s nothing Strictly about this routine. The piano arrangement, played to tremendous effect by Jason Ridgway, lends a huge amount of elegance and refinement to the depiction of four couples’ relationships as seen through different seasons of the year. What I really loved here was the balance between power and control in both the actual physical dancing and also in the interactions between the individuals. Oihana Vesga Bujan and Liam Riddick in particular formed an astonishing partnership for their own duet and Nancy Nerantzi was simply stunning throughout. It was breathtaking to see how the dancers occupied the entire space of the Derngate stage for the Spring finale; how can anyone cover that much distance with such apparent ease? That, gentle reader, is why they are the dancers and I’m not. Also a word of appreciation for Jeffrey Rogador’s fantastic costumes; the colours of the dresses were just amazing – in particular Miss Nerantzi’s wow-factor Tequila Sunrise outfit; the hard-edged black semi-robotic costumes of the men made a brilliant contrast. For me that was the dance of the night.

The programme concluded with Richard Alston’s An Italian in Madrid, a two-act mini-masterpiece that tells the side by side story of Domenico Scarlatti’s tutelage of the young Princess Maria Barbara, who takes him to Spain, where he creates his sonatas with an Andalusian influence; and her encounter with Prince Ferdinand of the Asturias who seeks her hand in marriage under the distant eye and musical watch of the composer. It’s an absolutely beautiful dance simply to watch and admire, with effective, clear story-telling through the choreography, superbly atmospheric Baroque music and costume (I loved the accordion arrangements) and the chance for a few stand-out performers to give some crowd-pleasing solos. For this piece, the company has been joined by BBC Young Dancer finalist from 2015, Vidya Patel. She is an expert in the art of Kathak, and her contributions to the piece so beautifully blend that traditional Indian style with western contemporary dance, giving her character in this piece a thoroughly exotic edge. She has outstanding stage presence, performs her solos for the Prince with verve and grace and is one of those dancers you can’t take your eyes off! So there would be no one more technically spot-on than Liam Riddick to dance the role of the Prince, with his fantastic show-off skills and thrills, to impress the Princess. It goes without saying that both their solos received rapturously appreciative applause. Exquisitely beautiful, tremendous artistry; we loved it.

The company has one more night in Northampton (tonight – 5th October, the town loves having you!) then the tour continues to Brighton, Snape Maltings, Glasgow, Dartford and Woking. The company are always a complete pleasure to watch and my admiration for their athleticism and grace knows no bounds. Top quality contemporary dance in a nutshell.